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Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

NBC News has an important story about musician hearing loss, this time about rock musicians. The story today by Joel Aleccia (here) mentions particularly the danger of a particular instrumentalist playing next to another set of instruments, particularly percussion, often very loud. Saxophonist Trevor Specht, of Lutherville, MD, mentions the problem of playing next to drums and cymbals.

Many rock musicians do use ear plugs.

Some instruments, especially percussion, require being able to play a particular combination of instruments, as in common in various groups, including classical orchestras (like in Mahler's Sixth with the hammer blows). The range of instrumentation has certainly increased with modern music and the use of computers and very novel sounds and tones.

For that matter, DJ's, in smaller clubs, often turn the volume up way too loud, making the music screech.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

I don’t know that a baseball game is quite the cultural
event (a play or concert) usually on this blog, but I thought I would note that
a female jazz player did quite a bif of improvising on a solo trumpet on
Half-Street outside Nationals Park before the game.

The Nationals lost, 4-2.
In the second inning, a Nationals player, Danny Espinosa, was hit in the
head (on a helmet) lay on the ground for a moment, but got up and stayed in the
game.

Later, the US Army Chorus, which had performed last Sunday
at the Easter Sunrise Service, sung “God Bless America”. It sounded like Reagan all over again (or
maybe Kate Smith.

Brief correction and update:

It turns out that Espinosa was hit on the knee by the pitch and seems OK. But Bryce Harper is out for at least two months with thumb ligament surgery.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Today, I attended the Easter Sunrise Service in the Ampitheater
of the Arlington National Cemetery.
Parking was at Fort Myer, off route 27, with a shuttle bus. This experience brought back memories, of my own
three months at Fort Myer and the Pentagon in the summer of 1968 during my own
military service, covered elsewhere in my blogs.

There were two “musical selections” by the United States
Army Chorus, a cappella. One was “I Cannot Tell”, a setting of the Irish Folk
Song “Danny Boy” which became Charles Villiers Stanford’s Irish Rhapsody
#1. The second was a pre-Baroque “Alleluia:
Today Is Christ Risen” which I believe is by Michael Praetorius. The second hymn was of note, “He Lives”. The same hymn was sung with guitar at
Metropolitan Community Church of Dallas one evening in August, 1979 during
which a woman claimed to be healed of paralysis.

The sermon (or “message”) by Rear Admiral Margaret Grun
Kibben, Chaplain of the United States Marine Corps, repeatedly asked the
audience to respond “He is risen, indeed”.
Kibben referred to Communist Russia’s atheism, and seemed to allude to
the irony that it had helped drive out Hitler and Nazism from a supposedly
Christian Germany, an observation covered by Dr. Edward Hughes Pruden of the
First Baptist Church of Washington DC (1936-1969) in a 1951 book, discussed in
the “BillBoushka” blog, April 8, 2014).
This may have been an allusion to Putin’s aggressive behavior in many
areas.

The Army Band and Chorus performed the “Hallelujah Chorus”
that concludes Part II of Handel’s Messiah.
I have always preferred the Amen chorus at the end of the entire
work.

There was an interesting sight just before the service started.

Just outside the ampitheater, I noticed a touching encounter between a soldier and his police dog. I've noticed that some dogs like the sound of human heartbeats, and can probably even sense the electromagnetic signals from the body normally picked up by electrocardiograms.

I did attend the Easter service at First Baptist in
Washington DC today.

There was a brief prelude-concert with organ, tympani, and
trolley chimes, conducted by Neil
Holliker. It started with J.S. Bach, “Is Thee in Gladness”, followed by and
Aria by Cynthia Dobrinsky, and then “Spirit of the Living God” by Martha Lynn
Thomson. There followed a fanfare-like
festive piece called “Shall We Gather at the River” by Michael Helman, not to
be confused with the piano rhapsody called “At the River” by Timo Andres (covered
here Feb. 24, 2013). Finally, there was a “Celebration Fanfare” by Charles
Callahan.

For the main anthem (“The Gradual”) the choir performed
(with brass and organ) “A Hymn of Resurrection” by Gwyneth Walker, a loud and
triumphant piece in C Major reminding one of Vaughn Williams in some of his
more joyous moments. The Postlude was the usual Hallelujah Chorus of Handel.

There was also setting of Lowell Mason's hymn "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross", but with complex harmonization very close to that provided by composer Sir Arnold Bax in the triumphant epilogue that closes his Symphony #5.

The sermon, by Dr. Stan Hastey, discussed the books of late North
Carolina gay writer and English professor Reynolds Price (“A Long and Happy
Life”, “The Names and Faces of Heroes”) and his battle with an unusual spinal
cancer later in life.

The service also had a baby dedication for a family from
Nigeria. The extended family that
appeared was very large and with women dressed in brightly-colored attire
typical in the country. Nigeria, of
course, as a country, has gotten a lot of unfavorable attention in the news
recently, because of religious divisions, corruption and security problems that
have all politically exacerbated serious human rights abuses.

Monday, April 14, 2014

The now “classic” 1997 noir film “Lost Highway” by David
Lynch exists also as an opera, composed by Olga Neuwirth (female, Austrian)
with a libretto by Elfried Jelinek. The original film score had been filmed by Angelo Badalamenti.

The opera can be played “free” on YouTube from thislink
right now, with one still picture showing;
it runs 93 minutes. It can be
purchased on a CD through Amazon (link) for $26 but requires hardware that can play “super
Audio” SACD compatible which many CD and DVD players (even BluRay) may not yet
have. I checked mine and it doesn’t seem
that I have it. The publisher (Kairos)
should issue the score on conventional CD (2 discs, 33 tracks) and make
available for “Cloud” Mpg download on Amazon, if it wants revenue from
legitimate sales. I would have been
willing to purchase it.

The style of the music is certainly expressionistic, and is
almost “non musical” as it begins with subterranean groans. There are plenty of surreal effects from the
Webern world, like flutter-tongueing (sounding like a gurgle, reminding me of
those days in the early 1960s when my father complained that I was “listening
for distortion” in my records). But it
livens up, with many sharp chamber and brass passages, and sometimes will
scream out repeated notes, like the famous “B” near the end of Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck”
(which I did see in New York City at the Met in 1974). This is about as atonal as you can get.

Some of the critical lines from the story are spoken, which
does help the listener follow the high points, particularly when Pete Dayton is
found in the jail cell replacing Fred Madison (about 32 minutes into the
opera). I love the line toward the end, “We
have to go to the desert.” The reader can read the find details on the
Wikipedia entry for the movie. The
buildup in the first half hour is mesmerizing, as Fred keeps getting videotapes
of his activity at home with his wife, and then is teased by a Mystery Man in
two places at the same time. The idea of
waking up in a different body, maybe barely possible according to quantum
physics, certainly can lead to some areas of existentialism, applicable in my
own writing, to be covered soon on my new Wordpress blogs. (You can see the interpretation of Elijah
Malmrose in the video above.) The very end is fascinating: fortissimo, but then
dwindling back in guttural noises of the grave, as Fred meets his well deserved
demise, perhaps “escaped”, but on the Lost Highway. It seems to me that if “you” do something
evil, you won’t get away from it that easily with an escape through fantasy.

The opera was premeiered at the Finney Chapel at Oberlin College in Oberlin Ohio in Feb. 2007, and performed by Oberlin students at the Miller Theater in New York.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Well, let me get the record “straight” on what I said at
brunch and after church at an MCC in Fairfax County, VA today.

The last hymn was “In the Midst of New Dimensions”. The title suggests something that could fit
into NatGeo’s “Cosmos” series. We can
wonder if a Creator set up the laws of physics to work out exactly right for
us. But I got the composer wrong. It really is by Julian Rush (reference ).

I was mixing the music (and memory by ear) up with the somewhat similar (in
terms of emotional effect and style) “In a City Just Beginning”, by the
Minister of Music and organist Lawrence P. Schreiber, composed in 2002. The FBC, as I has covered, installed its new
Austin organ in 2013. It would be
expected that this piece might be performed on it. The hymn is in G Major, with a third verse in
parallel G Minor. The words were
authored by former pastor Jim Somerville, now the pastor at FBC in Richmond Va
on Monument Ave. The words would refer
to the city of Washington in the historical time before the War of 1812, when
FBC was founded.

Today, at MCC Northern Virginia (near downtown in Fairfax
City and two blocs off Rte 123, not far from GMU), the postlude consisted of a
couple of variations for piano and violin on the Rush hymn. I don’t know if Rush composed it this way for
concert performance. But it made perfect
sense, as if a movement of a violin sonata.

Hymnology was a big thing at First Baptist Church of the
City of Washington DC in the 1950s and 1960s, with the active music program
which Dr. Pruden encouraged. There were
a lot of concerts, and later Alvin Lunde founded the Bach Orchestra there. Another organist while a Peabody college
student in the mid and late 1960s, William Evans, taught organ and brought
modern French organ music (especially Marcel Dupre with that notorious “Cortege
and Litany”) to the congregation, to the consternation of some people who just
wanted old fashioned Bible hymns. I
recall that controversy while I was away at graduate school (at KU). Later Mr. Evans worked at a Lutheran church
in Baltimore, which was even more high church and ready for music
education. Not many people (including
me) that the organ at FBC then had been built in the 1930s and had been brought
over from the previous building.

There was a member at MCC Dallas, Danny Ray, in the 1980s,
who apparently had composed a number of hymns in widespread use.

My own favorite composer as for consistent contribution to
hymn literature is British post-romantic composer Sir Hubert Parry (“I Was Glad”). I like a little bit of harmonic complexity.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Today, I played the entire “Symphony #1, ‘Gothic’” by
British composer Havergal Brian, from a Marco Polo (aka Records International)
CD set that I believe I bought at Tower Records in Washington around 1991. The performance, recorded in 1989, is by the
CSR Symphony (Bratislava) and the Slovak Philharmonic, conducted by Ondrej
Lenard, with a large ensemble of different choruses and soloists from the Czech
Republic, all done about the time Eastern Europe was falling away from the
Soviet Union (almost the same time that the Berlin Wall fell).

This is said to be the longest “symphony” ever composed, but
it comes across as a set of two works.

Part I is a fully orchestral symphony in D Minor, in three
movements. The first movement (Allegro
assai) is compact, fast, a bit blunt or even brutal, and clear in form with
distinct themes and clear sonata structure.

The mood is closer to that of Vaughn Williams in his most celebratory
moments than to Mahler, to whom Brian is often compared. The very end has rich modulations to finally
end fortissimo on the Picardy D Major.
You can imagine Prince Charles and Prince William liking this
music. The slow movement (Lento) is
somewhat pastoral, again evoking Vaughn Williams a bit. The complex “finale” (Vivace) seems to rework
some of the preceding themes (sometimes fugally). It is about to end furiously and
triumphantly, when the harmony turns abruptly back to minor for a “last chord”,
and then there is a one minute D Major epilogue – maybe after Bax – which seems
to be an connection to Part II. So Part
I would be a complete and satisfying symphony without this last “epilogue” or
transition.

Part II, a church liturgical choral work, will shift the
tonality to E, and take us into a different world, that to my ear sounds like a
reworking of the mood of the Verdi Requiem, with a lot of dissonance and
polytonality. But in fact, it starts
with a “Te Deum”, which actually ends quietly, and then is followed by a “Judex”,
which will end triumphantly. The musical
effect is something like that of the Sanctus and Offertorium in the Verdi
work. The last movement, over a half
hour, is the “Te ergo quarenumua” more
or less provides a “Dies Irae” and a comparison with the violent treatment by
Verdi is appropriate. The music rises to several huge climaxes, often over
crashing dissonances in the brass, and seems to literally explode near the end,
over drum rolls, with brass and organ falling around. The work could end with this, fortissimo, in
E, but instead chooses end with a quiet Epilogue, which is a curious mixture of
Mahler, Verdi, and Sir Arnold Bax.

The cello plays a theme recalling the opening
of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, and then the choir sings a cappella, closing with
soft, comforting E Major chords. I don’t
know of any major orchestral-choral work that ends a cappella.

The music is available on YouTube, I don’t know how
legally. Here’s the First Movement link. By itself, it sounds very “British”.

If you want to hear this work live (just as with the Third)
you probably need to go to Britain.

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Apparently, trademark and brand matter for arts
organizations, especially performance centers, and overseas. In Amsterdam, the Dutch equivalent of our
Kennedy Center will be known as the Dutch National Opera and Ballet, according
to this news story.

In September, it will present Arnold Schoenberg’s
Gurre-Lieder (reviewed here Feb. 22, 2012), and the Gounod Faust (the Berlioz “Damnation of Faust” is covered
here Jan. 21, 2009). I’m pretty sure that I have rented a DVD of Gounod’s Faust
– some years ago; right now I can’t find my review. Who can forget the lilting
aria melody at the end, and the chorus as Christ rises (some versions have the
guillotine and coffin).

It will present Verdi’s Falstaff, based on Shakespeare’s
“The Merry Wives of Windsor” in June. I
have an RCA CD of an RCA Italiana performance by Sir Georg Solti from 1964, a
bit tinny. Verdi has a way of making the
fast, perpetual motion passages for orchestra interesting (even at the C Major
lively conclusion) This opera was a
favorite of a friend nearby in Falls Church, VA who passed away at 69 in 2011
and who had built up one of the largest collections of classical music in the
country.

In 2015, it will present Verdi’s Macbeth (Jan 12, 2008 – Met
performance broadcast to theaters, and Jan. 30, 2012, the BBC film of the
Shakespeare play in a modern setting on PBS, TV Blog).

Lohengrin, the last “conventional” romantic opera by Richard
Wagner, will be presented in November. I
have a Sony CD of a 1982 performance with the Bayreuth Festival conducted by
Woldemar Nelsson with Peter Hoffman as Lohengrin, in this mythological
tale. The last act opens with the famous
active prelude, and then the Wedding March (and this was “Will and Sonny Day”
on the soap “Days of our Lives”). The
entire work does end triumphantly in A Major.

The Stravinsky Firebird appears to have been presented in
March of this year. This is the one “romantic”
(like Rimsky-Korsakov) ballet before Stravinsky moved to his “modern” style
(Jan. 18).

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